The pain of a broken heart is more brutal the older you are.

The first time I fell in love I felt exalted and unbreakable. I brimmed with bravado because he was the sweetest first boyfriend I could find and he had a car and took me to bands. It didn’t last for long, yet I was shocked how much the end hurt. I remember gasping at the slice to my heart, the twist in my gut, the full body ache and the crying in geography class. I resolved then and there to toughen up. Older people I reasoned, have hearts that are stronger, thicker and immune to pain. I’d harden my heart just like them.

Of course that resolution didn’t last and my heart broke a couple more times before I turned thirty. Each time the pain was proportional to the level of exquisite thrill of the love. The one who glowed with shining silver light in the beginning made me feel like I was drowning in my own black blood at the end.

The one who made me giggly and giddy rendered me sobbing and heavy. By thirty, my heart had indeed hardened. It felt battle scarred, slightly calcified and less vulnerable. The grief of breaking up with the bloke who I thought was the love of my life, came with agony but also a pride in my resilience. I knew I’d recover and, with a stronger sense of self, I didn’t feel so lost.

Recently a friend of mine held her devastated au pair as the young tourist crumpled into the ball of pain that is the preserve of the first time dumped. Wiping away the girl’s wretched tears my mate pondered this question – is a broken heart worse earlier or later in life?

Rod Stuart sang ‘the first cut is the deepest’. Baby I know. But it doesn’t mean it’s the hardest to heal. Because late in life there’s more to lose.

There is nothing like the pure pain of first love. Its perfection and purity is almost beautiful. That total egocentric belief that no one else has loved like this and no one else has felt pain like this seems awfully sweet to me now. But I’m not dismissing the agony. In the 1961 film ‘Splendor in the Grass’ Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty play inter-class lovers who cannot be together. I remember watching it after a break up in my late twenties and being almost jealous of their exquisite wretchedness. The film’s title is taken from William Wordsworth’s 1807 poem which Natalie’s crumbling character is forced to read to the class.

‘Though nothing can bring back the hour?

Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower?

We will grieve not, but rather find?

Strength in what remains behind.’

By the time we are in our thirties we have built strength in what remains within. The break up film for that age may be ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ where the characters pay to wipe each other from their memories so they can forget the pain. But, a break up of a long-term relationship in your forties doesn’t allow you that luxury. Nor would it want to. Separation is as complicated as unscrambling an egg or un-cooking a cake. You can’t cleave apart because your lives are utterly cleaved together. There are often children; the legacies of your lost love and constant reminders of each other. The constant negotiation of the management of their lives, the pain of an empty quiet house when they are with the ex, the fights over shared care can contaminate healing.

On top of that there can be years of resentment, fury and blame, the horror of dividing the belongings, property, the money issue and the combative nature of the family court. The simple sliced quick pain of first loss seems attractive compared to the loss of a love that is complicated and upon which your life has built.

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Hearts swelled by children and scarred by love are not necessarily tougher. Torn scar tissue is a bugger to heal. The reason first love so sweet is because we know it can’t last. But the one you think will last can hurt the most. There’s a theory that a relationship takes half the length of time it lasted to heal. Even if that’s not true, there’s a haunting for life.

Remember what Rod Stewart said (post continues after video)

Older hearts are strong but they are not always tough. The layers of pain are deeper and more complex. They are worn and frayed and embedded in that of another. The strength comes in power, resilience, knowledge, insight and acceptance. As I get older I am so much stronger, but I feel in some ways my heart is more worn. It’s also more open to pain and joy. I feel it ache in tissue and bank commercials and swells up into my throat when I hear my son sing and my daughter giggle.

I’ve always loved Bjork and I feel in a way I’ve grown up with her – through periods of crazy fashions, a peak period of success, a turning to deeper engagements and then her retreat into domestic life and middle-aged motherhood. Bjork’s new album ‘Vulnicura’ (which means both wound and healing) is a compositional diary of her wrenching separation from her partner Matthew Barney the father of her 12-year-old daughter. It’s been, she says, ‘the most painful thing’ she’s ever experienced. I find it almost too painful to listen to; it’s hesitant, complex, and powerful and just in case you don’t hear the pain features a picture of her with a wound on her chest, which looks like a cross between a gaping wound and a vagina.

Bjork’s grief is deepened by the loss of what she calls the 'sacred mutual mission of family'. She sings of wounds, scars, rupture and the end of her family. Yet she knows that she can’t wipe the hurt; ‘don’t remove my pain, it’s my chance to heal”

As we age we learn to honour the pain. We understand we’re broken. We know hearts don’t really completely heal but there is strength in their ability to mend.

So what do you feel? Is heartache worse first love or in what could be your last?